An integrated circuit (IC) chip is a miniaturized electronic circuit that has been manufactured in the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor materials. An IC chip may comprise mainly semiconductor components and passive components. IC chips are used in almost all electronic devices in use today. Computers, network devices, communication devices and many other digital appliances may be made possible by the low cost of production of IC chips. IC chips may contain anything from one to millions of logic gates, flip-flops, multiplexers, and other circuits in a few square millimeters, for example.
An IC chip in a system such as, for example an Ethernet PHY chip in an Ethernet system, may be sometimes in an idle or standby mode. For example, most of the time, the Ethernet system is just in the standby mode to monitor the upcoming communication events. Because of the leakage current in MOS technology such as, for example, in CMOS technology, electrical power may still be consumed by the chip while the chip is in the idle or standby mode.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.